Sweet dreams, Emma
by The Sangheili Mutant
Summary: Roderick's hand was wrapped around her throat, choking her, but all she could think of was her similar encounters with Jacob and Paul. This was her life without Joe, unrelenting suffering from the hands of those she had wronged.


Disclaimer: the characters in _The Following_ do not belong to me. All I own is this story's concept, and random Agnes, who is barely mentioned. If old Agnes is coincidentally in the show, I'll change her.

**contains suicidal thoughts, character death, and slash (Paul/Jacob)**

A/N: set after season 1

**Sweet dreams, Emma…**

* * *

><p><em>Night One<em>

It had been nearly a week since she heard the news about Joe's death; killed by Ryan Fucking Hardy. God, she hated that smug bastard! And to make life worse, one of the Followers was tipping off the FBI, giving them names of those like them. Just yesterday, she saw Agnes' mug shot on the news. That old hag was a complete mystery to the feds until the rat gave her up…what if she was next?

No. She was smarter than that. She didn't stay in one place for too long, she didn't make friends, and she didn't try to contact any of Joe's followers, wherever they scattered to.

She was holed up in some one star motel two states away. She paid in cash, enough for her to stay until the end of the week. She was dangerously low on the currency, maybe tomorrow she'd hustle a couple hundred buck out of some drunkards playing pool or darts.

She had spent the last five hours on the road, and her body was full of sore muscles and cramps. She plopped down onto the bed, too tired to change out of the clothes she had been wearing the past day. The mattress was incredibly lumpy, but she was simply too tired and too depressed to worry about morning back pains.

Joe was dead, gone forever. The man she devoted her life too was never coming back to her. She rolled onto her side and curled in as she cried for him.

After her tears had dried, there was a knock on her door- loud, angry, door-shaking booms. She realized she had cried herself to sleep and looked at the clock, which read 3:13.

'_Who the hell is here in the middle of the goddamn night? Just leave me alone_…' she thought, tucking a knife into her waistband behind her back. The knocks continued, not stopping. "I'm coming!"

She threw open the door, and her jaw hit the floor. Her throat tightened as she looked up at the man in front of her. His eyes burned into hers, she could tell he was beyond pissed.

"Hello, Emma." he said, voicing disgust. His head tilted I the exact same manner it had when they were reunited at the mansion.

"Jacob?" she asked, her voice barely audible. He leaned against the door frame casually, giving her a smile that seemed a little _too _friendly.

"Aren't you gonna say anything? Like, oh, I don't know, that you're _surprised_ to see me?" he asked, mirroring another encounter they shared at the mansion.

"You…you can't be here." she said, finally able to find her voice.

"And why can't I, hmmm?" Jacob asked, looking down at her. "What _exactly_ is the reason I can't be here?!" he yelled, and pushed the door open, right out of her hands.

She took two steps back, reaching for her knife.

"You and your knives, Emma, really? Aren't you just a one trick pony." he sneered, taking two ateps into the room.

"You're dead, Jacob. You're not real." she said, holding the knife out as her vision blurred with tears, which she quickly rectified with hasty blinks.

"You're…you know what? You're absolutely right. I'm dead, Emma." His demeanor changed, became more sinister. "Because of YOU!" he accused, complete with a pointing finger.

"Jacob, I…" she started, trying to hold back her tears.

"You're what? Sorry? I bled out, couldn't breathe, less than two feet away from you in that stupid car. All because you didn't know how to love me _and_ Joe? Joe's married! Er…he was." he bellowed, neck muscles contracting in his anger.

"Please wake up." she muttered, closing her eyes. When she reopened them, Jacob was still in front of her.

"You said you loved me, Emma, but that night…I knew it was all lies. You chose Joe over me."

She needed to wake up, already, dammit! "You were going to leave us! If I didn't kill you, Joe would have! I didn't want that to happen." she said, shaking like a leaf even as she brandished her knife. Jacob rushed at her with a yell of fury and she jabbed the knife at him, sticking it into his chest.

He grunted and looked down at the knife she still clung. He looked back up to her with a laugh. "Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, shame on me." he said as a large gash appeared on his neck, materializing from nothing.

Her eyes widened and she tried to run for the door, but he was faster and stronger. The lamp magically flicked on, making the blood dripping down her dead boyfriend's body that much harder to unsee.

"Do you feel sorry for killing me?" he asked, holding her arms tightly. "Do you? Because I think you only killed me in an attempt to get some sympathy sex with that obsessed ring leader of ours." he continued, hurling her at the bed.

She watched, paralyzed in fear, as Jacob pulled the knife from his body and climbed onto the bed. She couldn't move, even as he straddled her and held the knife to her throat. His blood trickled down her neck, and she squirmed uncomfortably, but what really made her feel nauseous was when he leaned closer, forcing the blood from his neck to drip all over her. She could see the cut tendons and muscles and exposed nerves just beyond the edges of his opened skin.

"Hey…" Jacob started, shifting her gaze to his eyes. "I know what it's like to be in love with two very different people." he whispered as he stroked her hair. She flinched away, trying to avoid the rain of blood drops as he moved.

"It took me to kill Paul to finally accept the way I truly felt about him…and, well…" he paused, yanking at a fistful of her hair. She cried out, locking eyes with him as her heart started pounding faster and faster. "I don't know how to love you both."

He mocked her , her final words to him as she killed him. He raised the knife up with one hand, and she screamed as it fell towards her heart.

* * *

><p><em>Night Two<em>

After that hell-storm of a nightmare, she couldn't bring herself to go back to sleep, or to even spend another night in that place. When the literal crack of dawn arrived, she was out of there, speeding down the road and completely _not_ tired. A couple of towns over, she bought a six-pack of energy drinks. There was no way she was suffering that paralyzing night terror again, not tonight.

She spent the next day watching TV in her new motel room. It was in slightly better condition than last night's, but not by much. Any time a news report popped on screen, she would immediately switch channels. She couldn't watch the reports of Joe's death and the takedown of their "cult" just yet, it was too soon. She hated how they termed their following a "cult", that word had way too many negative generalizations about it.

After she chugged her third can of sugary syrup, the cartoon she was watching went to a commercial break. It was the perfect time for her to void her almost too-full bladder, She closed the door, did her business, and felt ten times better. She washed her hands, opened the door, and froze. Her heart was hammering again, but not from the massive sugar intake, but due to the man lying on her bed.

"No way. You can't be in here. You're dead, just like Jacob." she said, white-knuckling the door knob.

"Jacob may have been the one to hold the gun to my head, Emma, but you sure as shit pulled the trigger." Paul said, facing her as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. There was a large, bloody hole in his stomach, his shirt saturated in blood.

"I didn't do that to you." she said, trying to defend herself.

"Not directly." Paul replied as he stood up, not even flinching at his wound, just like Jacob.

"You guys…you can't blame me." she replied, her voice shaky.

"But we do. I do, Emma. I know Jacob explained it all to you, how much it hurt him to have to let me go like that. Tell me, how screwed up does a person have to be to kill the two participants of her only three way?" he asked, giving a glance to the TV.

How did Paul know that was her first ménage à trois? How the hell could he possibly know?

"I see Jacob rattled your cage, good for him. You deserve to be scared." he said, approaching her with a certain malice to his step.

"You a-and Jacob, you can't do anything to me. You're not real." she said. Why couldn't she snap away from these dreams?

"Sure we can. There's a whole world of things we can do to you, Emma. Did you know sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture?" Paul asked, suddenly appearing inches in front of her. She swallowed nervously, again trying to wake up. "Not only does it break one's will, but it causes things…psychosis, hallucinations, muscle aches, memory loss, depression. I'm sure I'm forgetting some."

"You did forget something, Paul. I'm asleep right now." she said.

"Not for long. You die in a dream, you wake up. And my money says you won't be getting back to sleep once you see what I'm going to do to you." he said, and grabbed her by the shoulders, and slammed her into the wall. Before she could even move, he pushed her to the floor and stood over her as she nursed her sore body.

"I'll be back for you if you drift off again tonight, even for a second. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow, maybe it'll be Jacob." he said, suddenly holding a gun.

"Just shoot me and get it over with." she said, glaring up at him through her bangs.

"If you say so." he said, pulling the trigger.

The sound from the gun was ten times louder than any real gun she had heard, and the bullet pierced her chest, lodged into her heart, and she felt it all for a moment before she screamed, one hand clamping down on her wound. "As long as you don't die, I got all the time in the world." Paul said, scratching the side of his head with the barrel of the gun. "At least until something wakes you up."

"I'm sorry for what happened, Paul, but it wasn't my fault." she said through gritted teeth.

Paul let out an amused chuckle. "Let's put two and two together. _You_ scampered off with Joey, leaving Jacob and I behind." he began, circling around from her feet to her head. "That stupid, bull-headed Ryan Hardy stabbed me in the confusion you caused, and Jacob was forced to smother me so he wouldn't have a dying lover at his side, a constant reminder of what you _caused_."

Another shot rang out, tearing through her shoulder this time. She screamed again as fresh pain spread across her flesh.

"Before I do send you back with a lovely little bullet to the brain, know this: Jacob and I, we're happy in the afterlife. We may be in Hell, but we're together. We couldn't be happier. Maybe Joe will wait for you." he said, kneeling down as he put the gun against her head. "Or maybe he won't." he said, and pulled the trigger one last time.

* * *

><p><em>Five days later<em>

She was seeing them everywhere. Every-mother-fucking-where! They were constantly threatening her, taunting her, laughing at her. They were always together, sometimes holding hands, sometimes making out. One time, she tried to rest in yet another dingy motel room, practically tweaking from constant caffeine to keep the nightmares away, and they just showed up in bed with her. Jacob to her right, Paul to her left. They cackled at her as she curled into a ball, covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut to avoid them. They just wouldn't leave her alone, awake or asleep. Was it a guilty conscience? Was she going crazy from her grief over Joe? Who the fuck knew?

She found herself in Maryland the fifth day after first getting stabbed in the heart by Jacob. She didn't even remember driving! Huge chunks of time have been missing from her memory the past couple days. She was spiraling down, she knew that much, but she just didn't know how to get back up.

"Don't you think you're being a bit reckless coming back here?" Roderick asked rom the passenger seat of the unable-to-remember-stolen-car.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, genuinely confused at the sight of this particular Follower.

"I could ask you the same thing. Havenport, here we are." he said. It was dark outside, the car idling at a stop sign on an empty road.

"You really shouldn't be driving in your condition, unless you got some kind of death wish." Roderick added, looking down the lanes of the intersection. "How long has it been since you last slept? You look…" he stopped, laughing to himself. "You look awful." he said, his face all serious again.

"It's night number five." Jacob said, suddenly in the back seat. Was she asleep right now, or was she hallucinating? She couldn't distinguish reality anymore.

"So, Emma, why do you think I'm here, now? I mean, the love-birds behind you, I understand. But moi?" Roderick asked, pointing to himself, eyebrows raised in question.

Paul and Jacob started screwing again, right in the back seat, so she stormed out of the car, getting far away from their pillow-talk compliments on how much they loved each other, and the size of their junk, and how good it felt to get fucked in the ass.

She was walking down the side of the road at a brisk pace, when laughter from the car caught her attention. She stupidly turned to look at it, but was not at all surprised to see it rocking back and forth rhythmically.

Roderick was suddenly right beside her, walking backwards, but keeping pace with her stride. "You know you're gonna get caught here, don't you?" he asked, not even looking at her.

"So?" she replied stoically. "There's nothing left for me anymore. Joe's dead. The Followers are scattered off to fuck-knows-where, and someone's talking to the cops, giving us up."

"Oh, I know." he replied, stopping ahead of her.

"What do you mean you know?" she asked, stopping next to him.

"You don't remember? Wow, you must be really strung out." he said, grinning in amusement.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, her eyelids heavier than she'd like.

He moved up to her, and stroked her cheek with one finger. She looked away, and he 'hmm'ed. "You're the one ratting to the FBI. You're losing it, girl. The burner cells, the constant relocation, the lack of Joe, it's taking its toll on your sanity."

"No, I wouldn't…" she began, but in a flash, Roderick's hand wrapped around her throat, and he choked her.

"Joe and I, we may have had our…differences…but even through all that, I constantly regret betraying him, even in the state of mind I was in back then." he gruffed, squeezing her neck harder. For the briefest second, she thought he looked like Jacob, the night he threatened to kill her because of Paul, but just as quickly, Jacob's hazy image became Roderick's clear one.

"You're being selfish, Emma. Cowardly even." he continued, and she tried to pry his hand off her neck. "It's not like you're in custody, or being tortured. No deals, no threats, you're just betraying those that followed Joe. What would he think of you? Would he kill you himself, or would he send someone to do it for him, do you think?" he asked, squeezing harder still. Her struggles were becoming slower, less fierce.

"I never knew what he saw in you. You're weak, whiny. 'Oh, Joe doesn't want to screw me anymore because he's throwing a temper tantrum!' Take a goddamn hint, bitch! He'll always choose Claire over you, even in death. You want to find out?" he asked, giving her a sinister glare.

She tried to shake her head 'no', even in her oxygen-reduced state, but her body didn't want to obey. She was on the verge of blacking out when he released her. She coughed and breathed in deep gulps of air. She slowly realized she was on the ground, and when she looked up, Roderick was gone. The car was still parked at the stop sign, unmoving, and she ran to it, feeling she was going to die if she didn't get out of town right fucking now. She floored the gas and barreled through the small town in less than a minute.

* * *

><p><em>Night Eight<em>

She didn't know what town she was hiding in now, didn't really care either. Roderick had to be lying, or her brain had to be lying. She was just tired, that's all. There was no way she was betraying Joe by turning everyone in. She didn't even know where they were, for the love of fuck!

She was huddled on the floor of some crummy, run-down building, barely fazed by the rats and cobwebs. Any other time, she'd 'nope' out of there, but now? Now she barely even noticed them.

She was trying to wrap her brain around a scenario where it could even be slightly conceivable that she could be the one responsible for the turn ins. She hated it, but she could see the scenario: memory loss brought on by the three hallucinations' insomnia journey.

This wasn't what she wanted! She wanted Joe to be alive so they could be together, and move on to the next phase of his grand plan. Maybe the best thing for her to do was to die, keep anyone else from getting dragged down into her personal muck. As she looked around, she saw half a dozen ways she could end her life in the vicinity, easy.

Yeah.

If she was dead, she could be reunited with Joe. She could be away from Paul and Jacob and Roderick. From Hardy, from the FBI, from everything. The remaining Followers of Joe's would be safe, and she could have Joe all to herself, no Claire to worry about. And Joe could forgive her for what she had done, he'd understand it wasn't really _her_ doing this.

"Maybe he will." Roderick said, sitting to her left.

"One way to find out." Paul agreed, crouched in front of her, staring into her eyes.

"Just grab that broken chair leg over there and stab yourself, right here." Jacob said to her right, touching himself on his stomach.

"You'll bleed out pretty fast." Roderick agreed.

"And in a few moments, you'll be free, you'll be with Joe. He's the one you belong with." Paul said, lightly touching her knee.

Their voices were all soft, calm, encouraging, reassuring…but why?

Does it really matter? She decided it didn't and crawled towards the chair leg Jacob pointed to, ignoring the protests her slowly deteriorating body made at movement. She heard footsteps, and thought Jacob or one of them was coming to be with her in her final moments. But the footsteps were coming from ahead, not behind. She jerked her head up, eyes widening at the sight of Ryan Hardy, gun drawn.

"Don't move, Emma." he said, staring her down.

"Why the hell am I seeing you? You're not dead." she said.

"No, I'm not." he said, kicking the chair leg away.

"Ryan, stop. Stop it. Please…I have to do this." she said, looking to the chair leg and hoping he would just do what she said.

"You're not getting away this time." he said, moving to handcuff her.

"No…" she groaned, too tired to put up a struggle. She was lifted to her feet, hands bound. "Ryan, you don't…you don't understand!" She was starting to feel frantic, afraid even. He led her outside, into the mob of police.

"They won't leave me alone! They're everywhere! I…I have to be with him…Joe…he wants me back! Ryan!" she struggled and protested and squealed as she was pushed into the back seat of a squad car. Ryan got into the front and drove her away from all the noise.

"Looks like you're stuck with us." Roderick's voice said. She momentarily froze before looking to her right, and there they were; all three of them, crammed in the back with her. A coughing fit racked her body, not unusual for her after all this time on the run, and with little nourishment.

"You know, you can always kill yourself in a jail cell, too." Paul said. He wasn't wrong…

"Ryan?" she asked, her voice hoarse. "Who gave me up?"

"Now why would I tell you?" the man Joe was obsessed with asked.

"Because…I'm dying." she replied, turning her head to show him the blood she had coughed up on herself.

"Mission complete, babe." Jacob said, stroking the back of Paul's head.

"Emma, you turned yourself in. How else do you think we were able to find you in that building? Anonymous tip?" Ryan replied, eyeing the blood in worry. "What happened to you?" he added, knowing she was a changed woman, but not for the better.

"I told you…they won't leave me alone. Haven't slept in…" she paused, trying to remember how many sleepless nights had passed. "Forever." she finally gave up on trying to remember. She felt so tired, but knew her hallucination buddies wouldn't give her the luxury.

"I'm so cold." she whispered as the world faded to black.

Ryan immediately pulled over as Emma fell limp in the car, cursing under his breath. He threw open both doors and caught her body as it tumbled out of the seat. She carefully laid her body on the pavement and checked for a pulse. As he found no trace of one, he got an unnerving study of her body. She looked like a shit's shit thawed over improperly. She was thinner than he remembered, and her skin looked waxy and bruised.

He started CPR without even realizing it, but his attempts to bring her back weren't working.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit!" he yelled. Emma, their one link to finding the rest of the cult, was dead. Why she even started to give everyone up would forever remain a mystery. Was it guilt? Grief? Jealousy? Revenge?

"Guess it doesn't matter now." he said aloud, and took out his phone.

Time for yet another long night thanks to Joe Carrol's cult.


End file.
